The Cracks Are Finally Getting Big Enough To Notice

If this month's Washington Post/ABC News poll is accurate, it marks the first real time we've seen Trump lose support from his base as his total disapproval rating is now 60%, a majority believe he has obstructed the Mueller probe, and a plurality now favors impeachment.

President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe.

Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings that could lead to Trump being removed from office, while 46 percent say Congress should not.

And a narrow majority — 53 percent — say they think Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller’s investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction of justice; 35 percent say they do not think the president has tried to interfere.

Overall, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 36 percent approving, according to the poll. This is only a slight shift from the last Post-ABC survey, in April, which measured Trump’s rating at 56 percent disapproval and 40 percent approval.

The new poll was conducted Aug. 26 to 29, in the week after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of federal tax and bank fraud and after former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and implicated the president in illegal payments to silence women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump.

The four-month gap between Post-ABC polls makes it difficult to attribute the modest uptick in disapproval of Trump to specific events. Other public polls have shown Trump’s disapproval rating in the low- to mid-50s and have not tracked a rise since the Manafort conviction and Cohen guilty plea. 

Here's the real problem for Trump however:

You catch that?  His approval rating among Independents is down to 35%, and among his own party it's now under 80%.  Trump's approval rating among Republicans has been very high, in July it was a whopping 87%.  It hasn't been this low since January and the tax/budget mess in this poll.

However, the prospects for Trump's news getting better were much higher in January, and from January to July, Trump's numbers got significantly better.  He's given all that back now, and he's back in the hole again.

We'll see if he stays there.